


alone and palely loitering

by acroamatica



Category: Original Work
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Other, cw: irresponsible use of alcohol, love and the strange places you find it, sort of rpf if you squint and you know who i'm talking about, ten pounds of feels in a five pound bag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 18:52:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10814724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acroamatica/pseuds/acroamatica
Summary: The first time I see him, I immediately look again.Late one night, at a bar, two people meet over a cigarette. One of them is a cab driver. The other may or may not be real.





	alone and palely loitering

**Author's Note:**

> for [brawls](http://brawlite.tumblr.com) and [jane](http://internalizedobscurial.tumblr.com). i cannot accurately convey how many thanks are owed to you both, but it's at least one and a half imperial fucktons each.
> 
> art by the ever-terrific [sailer](http://sailerscrimshaw.tumblr.com), who puts up with a lot of shit from me. love you.
> 
> this story came out of:  
> \- so much yelling about how ezra miller's existence is as delightful as it is implausible; you will find that this isn't him, but i certainly cast him in this role.  
> \- wondering if i could write a completely ungendered main character, both because i identify as agender, and so that whatever the reader would like to assume about them, they are free to do so.  
> \- and a few more things that are definitely spoilers, so catch me in the end notes.

The first time I see him, I immediately look again.

I’m not too sure of the reality of anything, that night, and the six shots of Jamesons in me are clamouring about how reality is subjective and everything is a matter of perception, but mostly I’m perceiving that I’d like a cigarette, which is a thing whiskey tends to make me perceive.

I haven’t got any, of course, since I don’t actually smoke. Except when I’m drinking. And sure, these days I’m drinking most nights, and all my shirts smell of tar and burning in the morning, but what does that matter. Nothing matters. It’s all perception, isn’t it. Someone outside will probably be kind enough to spot me one.

Under one of the downlights that illuminates every piece of gum stuck to the pavement, there’s a boy. That’s probably the best term for him, anyhow. He’s a little too old for that, if I’m honest, but he’s long and slim and pretty enough to make a priest kick a hole in a wall: hardly anything so coarse as a _lad_ or a _bloke_ , or so substantial as a _man_ should feel. He’s wearing a fur coat that I’m sure is older than he is, and a floral romper cut for a preteen girl, no shirt, no scarf, no socks. One unlaced combat boot is pressed against the wall so his bare knee sticks out. But he’s smoking, and when I blink three times none of him changes, including the red-orange flare of his cigarette, so… I’ve seen weirder things, especially full of whiskey.

“Hey,” I say.

He doesn’t startle, exactly, but it’s clear he hadn’t noticed me. “Hey, yourself,” he says, in a voice that makes me wonder if I was right about his age.

“Can I bum a smoke off ya?” Standard procedure: I smile as charmingly as I know how, and watch his body language while I lie. “I’ve run out, and the shop’s shut.”

He leans back against the wall. The shadows under his cheekbones deepen as he sucks on his cigarette. “Time is relative,” he says, and closes his eyes.

“Closing time isn’t, so much.” I grin, even though he can’t see it.

I’m a little surprised when he smiles back at me. “A fair point, stranger.” He beckons me in closer. “So you want a cigarette. What will you give me for it?”

I don’t know what makes me say it. Maybe it’s the knowing way his lips are quirked at the corners - maybe it’s those long legs, bare from ankle to a couple of dangerous inches south of his crotch. Maybe it’s the glitter of his eyes, shaded by dark eyelashes. I think he’s wearing eyeshadow.

Maybe I’m just drunk.

“A kiss.” It’s too abrupt, so I soften it: “I’ll give you a kiss for it.”

He’s amused. Good. Maybe even interested. “An uncommon currency, between strangers, isn’t it?”

I lean in a little closer, and try to smile the way he’s smiling. “Well. We’ll hardly be strangers once we’ve kissed, will we?”

He nods once in acknowledgement, and the smile broadens. “A second and equally fair point, provided it’s a good kiss.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I say, from the burn of the whiskey in my belly: “If you don’t like it, you can return it and I’ll give you another, free of charge.”

When I see the flash of pointy white teeth, I know I’ve won. “I like you. You have a deal.”

“Jamie,” I say. “My name’s Jamie. Now that we’re acquainted.”

He slips one long hand into the deep pocket of his fur coat and comes out with a cigarette held precisely between his fingertips.

“You can call me Lennon,” he says, or I think he says - his accent is thicker than mine and it twists the vowels into something slipperier - and he tucks the cigarette gently behind my ear. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his fingers trail down to the back of my neck, just where the soft hair turns coarser. 

Lennon tastes like ash and mint and alcohol when I lick into his mouth. It’s a good kiss - I’m a damn decent kisser, even drunk, and I’m confident, and he responds to that very nicely indeed with his own ideas. 

That’s why I’m not exactly shocked to see his kiss-reddened lips purse with displeasure when I’ve pulled away.

“Didn’t you like that?” I ask. I can’t quite keep myself from smiling.

“No,” he says. “No, not at all.”

“Well then. Give it back.”

He takes a final drag on his own cigarette, and flicks the butt into the wet gutter. When he kisses me, I’m filled with smoke.

\---

In the morning, I find the cigarette, still unlit, next to my house keys on the bedside table. Lennon’s gone, of course. I think I remember him leaving, before the sun came up, and I hope I remembered to offer cab fare - judging by my habits, I probably did, but judging by my wallet, he didn’t take me up on it. 

There’s not much in there, but there wasn’t to start with. Shifts have been slow lately. If I quit drinking I could probably stretch what money I have further, but honestly I don’t like my life enough for that. Most days there’s nothing worth remembering, and I prefer the nights when I don’t have to work hard to forget.

I do almost wish I’d been a little less drunk last night. I’d like to have more than flashes of Lennon - those eyes and that mouth, the smell of vanilla that clung to him - but I didn’t know, and it’s all irrelevant now. I’m sure I won’t see him again. It’s a big city full of people, and someone like him would have places to be that are far better than here. 

What would he want with me, anyway.

The thing is, as I drive around the city all day, waiting for fares, I’m looking. I’m always looking. I watch, wherever I go - it’s what keeps me out of trouble, and lets me daydream about the inner lives of people more interesting than I am. I make up stories on the slow days. That one’s having an affair with her dentist; this one’s about to fly to Chile and climb mountains for two weeks; that one is secretly a superhero but only their secretary knows.

But now the only people that catch my eye are the very tall slim boys with dark hair and black combats. There are too many of those. I’d never noticed before just exactly how many - every street corner seems to have one on it.

It’s never him, but there are so many that tick half the boxes that my heart feels exhausted from leaping.

So I do what I always do when I clock out and I’m too tired to think: I go buy a drink. And then I drink it, and it feels lonely in my stomach, so I buy it a friend.

It’s got a small clique by the time a hand lands on my shoulder, and at first I don’t actually recognise him - I’ve spent so long looking for him and not seeing him that it takes me too long to be sure of who’s standing in front of me, even though there’s no-one like him.

“Jamie,” he says, and I stare at his chest hair and the red glass beads around his throat. He hasn’t really done up his shirt. At all. It’s a good look.

“Lennon.” I am not casual. I am too many whiskeys down for casual. “What are you doing here?”

“The same as you,” he says airily. “Drinking. Dancing. Looking for someone to fuck.”

His mouth makes a shape around that word that I feel like I almost remember. I think - I think he curses, in bed. I wish I did remember.

“I do,” he says, and he’s laughing - was I speaking out loud?

“You are,” he says. “Come on, Jamie. I think I found you just in time.”

I think so too.

\---

Next morning my head hurts and the kitchen chairs are all stacked up on one side of the table; my suspicions as to why are enough to make me wipe it down with soapy water before I put the chairs back. I can’t find my car keys until nearly noon. They turn up down the back of the sofa, and I don’t know why they’re there either. My wallet is in the fridge, with my phone, but they’re sitting next to a big jug of orange juice I don’t remember buying.

Maybe I didn’t. There’s a note stuck through the handle. 

_Drink up. You’ll need it. Take care._

There’s a scrawl underneath that that looks like it starts with an L, but I can’t read it. Whoever he is, Lennon is kind enough to his two-night stands to steal their house keys while they’re passed out and run down to the shops to make sure they don’t die of dehydration, and that’s something that makes me wish I actually knew anything at all about him.

I know how he likes to be kissed. I know he’s loud and enthusiastic and demanding and tastes good when I lick his neck. I know he likes to lie on top of me. But I don’t know where he lives, or what he does, or even his last name, and…

I don’t know why I should. But I want to. 

“Jamie,” I tell myself, looking in the mirror at my haggard face. “You’re just a decent shag. He’s not in love with you. You know that.”

I do know that.

“I’m not in love with you, Jamie,” I say, in my best approximation of his voice. It sounds nothing like him and I feel no different. Maybe it would work if I sounded as sweetly hoarse as he does, if I sounded as carelessly confident. “Get over yourself. Who do you think you are.”

I’m not even in love with him, not really. But I do like him, and my head hurts, and the sunlight is very strong.

I won’t drive today. I sit on the sofa and nurse a beer, catalogue the scrapes and bruises and rug burns and the bite mark on my shoulder, and ignore the way I keep seeing things out of the corners of my eyes. It’s just that my brain wants me not to be alone.

\---

I do have some pride. I’m not back at the bar until the bruises fade. But I watch them change colour like autumn leaves, and I can feel the winter creeping into my heart. Eventually it just needs some antifreeze.

This time I see him coming in the door. Not because I’m watching it, not really, I’m only facing that way because the news is on and they’re about to get to the sports scores. It’s just convenient that I _do_ see him.

“Lennon,” I call out, and wave the hand holding my highball glass like a toast.

His head snaps up - and then the alarm in his eyes is gone and he smiles with all his pointy white teeth. “Jamie! My own Jamie. What a fortuitous happening, I was so hoping there’d be someone _nice_ to sit with.”

I gather up my courage and the about-half of my equilibrium I’ve got left. “Let me buy you a drink.”

He tilts his head consideringly, and lays a finger over that wicked mouth. “In trade? Or freely offered?”

I don’t think there’s a wrong answer, exactly, but one of them is better than the other. “Freely offered.”

He nods graciously, and I don’t know how black eyes can look so warm. “Then I accept.”

I buy him a glass of wine. It’s what he asks for, and he looks good with it - he leans back in his chair and holds it in the air, the stem of the glass between his fingers like the cigarettes he will smoke later, the bowl of the glass nestled into his hand. He swirls it lazily, watching it the way I’m watching him: with an almost scientific curiosity.

Tonight he’s wearing satin, purple and mauve in starbursts under a white tuxedo waistcoat and a black suit jacket. There’s a red satin bow tie hanging loose around his throat, inside the collar of his shirt. I don’t know what to make of him. He looks like a debauched wedding guest, or a colourblind model, or someone so confident he dressed at random, knowing that everything would flatter him.

“What do you do, Lennon?” I ask suddenly, because I can’t just sit here watching him all night and we’ve never gone this long without one of us propositioning the other.

“I’m… in government,” he says languidly. It’s clear it bores him unutterably. “It’s something of a family profession, really. We all are. You?”

“I drive for U-Cab. Not a family profession at all.” I raise my glass. “But no more rides tonight.”

“None?” Lennon sips at his wine; a drip escapes his lower lip and he licks it delicately from the outside of the glass before it can stain his fingers. “Pity.”

“Why?” I look at him over the rim of my glass. “You wanted to go somewhere?”

“Oh, it’s always helpful to know someone who can get me where I’d like to go,” he says. It might be innocent, but the slow drag of his teeth over his wine-darkened lip suggests otherwise. 

“I think,” I say, “I might be able to pick you up.”

“So sure, charioteer.” His eyes twinkle mockingly. “But then, you’ve proven your skills before.”

I swallow more whiskey to melt the strange nervous tightness in my throat. “Well. How about a free ride tonight?” And I pull my phone from my jacket and slide it across the table to him, unlocking it with a swipe. “And then next time you want me to pick you up, you give me a call?”

“You _are_ bold.” He looks at me, and then the phone, and I think he’s genuinely impressed, and for a second -

“You’re not, like, related to the mayor of somewhere?” I ask quickly, to quell the worry. He has to be far too young to actually be anyone himself, but still, if he’s got a security clearance to maintain, or something -

“The mayor? No. No, Jamie - no.” He laughs into his wine glass.

I’m too drunk to work out why what I said was funny. But it doesn’t matter. He’s typing on my phone, fingers fast and spidery on the glass. Something in his jacket chirps.

“There,” he says, and hands it back to me.

I see he’s sent himself a message simply reading _Jamie the Charioteer_ , which is fine, kind of cute even - but it’s the name at the top of the contact screen that I blink at. 

“Leannán?” I ask, stumbling over the vowels I didn’t know were there. “Shit, have I been saying it wrong this whole time, and you didn’t stop me? Or am I now?”

“ _Leyan-nahn._ ” He smiles. “Leannán. So - yes, you were, but I don’t mind. I like the way you say it.” His fingers trail over the back of my hand, and the hair on my arms stands up. 

I look into his eyes. “Maybe you can help me practice.”

“It’s the _y_ you miss.” He lifts my hand to his mouth, and rests the pad of my middle finger on the sharp edge of his bottom teeth. “ _Leannán_ ,” he says; I can feel it, the gap between tongue and teeth, the point of his clever tongue so much more at home with the sounds than my own. “ _Leannán_.”

“Leannán,” I breathe, and he closes his lips around my fingers.

By morning I have it perfect.

\---

I put him in a car at five AM, just drunk enough to bully him until he gets in, even though he tells me three times that I don’t need to. I do. He has to get home, and damn it, don’t I get people home? 

I’d have taken him myself, if I could. I tell him that. I tell him I’d drive him anywhere, anywhere he liked, all night if he liked, sleep in the backseat with him on top of me just how he always ends up. He smiles, and I know there’s something I’m missing, something I don’t understand. I keep offering anyway.

But I remember the smile, and that’s more than I usually have; and I stay awake until the trip receipt pings into my inbox, so I know: wherever he is, he’s home.

He’s safe, and amongst the bedclothes, I’m safe too, camouflaged from the approach of the day. It’ll find me eventually, but not yet. I’ll doze until it does. 

My pillow smells like him. I tell myself it’s not the biggest reason I don’t want to get out of bed.

If at first I wasn’t sure he was real, now I know - there are traces of him all over. The marks he leaves on me. The rumpled hollow in the sheets where he laid next to me after. The empty cups from the coffee I made to keep us warm; the wet towels from the shower that worked better than that.

He kissed me up against the wall. There’s a faint handprint on the eggshell matte paint, right next to where my head would have been.

And there’s a number in my phone, and a name I have more of than before, and he’s only been gone four hours and I want him back.

With his scent in my nose like this, as if he might have just gotten up for a glass of water and will slide back in beside me any second… it’s hard not to wonder where he is. What he’s doing. 

I imagine him in a business suit, dapper and tailored, hair slicked back and sensible instead of the glorious black cloud like an oncoming storm. He would look good, of course - leaning back in a boardroom chair, superciliously taking notes - but it isn’t very Leannán. I put him back in the purple satin instead, and feel better about it, less like I’m trying to cage a wild thing.

I think about texting him. We talked for hours, last night, about nothing - stars, and predestination, and the passage of time. The shit you talk about when you’re drunk and in bed with someone you’ve kissed until you’d recognise the taste of them the way you know cinnamon or cardamom. But it’s a frail and locational magic, and my bed at nine is not the same place it was at three. 

So instead, to distract myself, I go through my emails. There’s always a couple dozen things to delete, offers I’ll never take up and sales I don’t want, and I’ve let it pile up. A few minutes’ work at most. An excuse to lie here just a little longer, where I am warm and can still feel like someone who was more than what I am now.

I _am_ more, when he looks at me.

The distraction isn’t working. And my finger is poised over the email from last night - the receipt that told me he’d made it home.

I should delete it. I don’t need to look at it. It was a short trip, from the timestamp, so I can afford it, and that's all I really have the right to know about that.

I should delete it. 

I don't. But I don't open it, not yet. That's my compromise. I file it carefully away, and try to reassure the ravenous beast inside me that if I need it - 

\- if I need him -

If I need him, and I can’t change _if_ for _when_ even though I know it will be _when_ , I will be able to find him.

\---

It’s been raining for four days straight when I get a pickup notification for Arden’s place. I consider turning it down - I always do well when it rains, so I could pass up the fare - but in the end I accept it. 

Sure enough, he's standing out the front of the building, under the awning. He looks the same as ever. Blond, fake; tan, fake; teeth, fake; watch, fake.

“Jamie,” he says, and the smile is, I suppose, real enough. 

“Hop in.” I know he’ll put the seat back, and he does, and I turn up the A/C without being asked and put the radio on the Top 40 station.

I try not to be irked. He didn’t use to annoy me this much. I’d reset that damn seat every afternoon when I started driving, for six months, and I remember I was glad to do it, thinking of the fine strong legs of him and what he’d use them for later that night.

But having him next to me now, unchanged in the way that moulded plastic dolls don’t change, is like sitting next to a van de Graaff generator. My skin prickles. 

“You’re looking well,” I say, because it’s something to say.

“You’re not.” He ruffles my hair. “Long days?”

_Charmingly honest_ , I’d called him once, to a friend who hadn’t liked him. As penance, I bite my tongue. “Yeah. You know I’m always busy when it rains. Late nights and that.”

“You must be making a motza,” he says admiringly. Arden always did appreciate the art of the hustle. “Well, if it’s worth it. Just take a nap or something. And lay off the sauce a little in between. You look pale.”

I look at the fake-tan orange hand tapping on the centre console and shake my head. “I’m all right.”

“If you say so.” He is undeterred. I’ve got fourteen more blocks not to snap at him. “And what else is new? Seeing anyone?”

“Yeah, actually.” The words come out before I can stop myself. “A few weeks now.”

That gets him to put one perfectly groomed eyebrow up. “Anything serious?”

Twelve blocks. “Maybe,” I say, considering in the back of my mind the image of Leannán sprawled out on my sofa, relaxed to the point of bonelessness; or the way he’d watched me make his coffee, intent and careful, as though he wanted to memorise how I stirred it. If only it were him, in my car now. “Early days for that, but - I wouldn’t mind.”

Arden chuckles. “He must be pretty.”

My ego suggests I should bristle at that, but Leannán’s honour compels me: “Very. Ruinously.”

“Prettier than me?”

Arden winks. I don't hesitate. “Yes.”

“Ouch!” He laughs. “But I did ask.”

Eight blocks. “You’d agree with me, if you saw him.” Maybe he wouldn’t. They couldn’t be more different to look at. But next to Leannán, all contrasts and sparkle, the flat gilt surfaces of Arden hold no appeal to me. Not anymore.

“Well. I wish you luck. The pretty ones are always hardest to keep.” He smiles knowingly. As if he’s ever tried to keep anyone.

I don’t know if I can keep Leannán - I don’t know if I should, or if being kept would ruin him. I like him wild and unknowable. But even if I can’t keep him, I’d like to _have_ him.

When I drop Arden off, he pats my cheek like he used to, and I feel slightly sick, as though I haven’t eaten all day. 

My hands are shaking. I pull my phone off the mount to see if there’s anywhere else I need to be right now, or if I can just stay here and air the Eau Sauvage out of my car, but I fumble my grip and drop the phone into my lap.

Fine then. I put the car in park.

With the windows open an inch or two, the atmosphere is less oppressive, and I rest my head on the steering wheel and let the tiny sneaky raindrops find my cheek.

I didn’t use to hate Arden. I didn’t. It’s been a long time since he was mine, and once the first wounds healed I never wanted him back, but… he didn’t set my teeth on edge like that the last time I drove him. He was just Arden, in all his newscaster glory, forever fresh like a waxed apple.

But I hadn’t met Leannán then. I hadn’t the faintest idea of his existence, which feels now like I hadn’t known about gravity, or light, or the colour blue.

I press my eyes against my knuckles until the sparks dizzy me, and wish. With all my heart, I wish. I’m not sure what I’m wishing for, exactly, but it’s to do with the awful quivery emptiness in my chest, and the look in Arden’s eyes, and the way air tastes when it’s filtered through Leannán’s thundercloud hair.

Of course, nothing happens except that eventually the feeling passes a little, but I need that too.

And then my phone chirps.

I scoop it up, one-handed, and turn the screen back on - and drop it again.

It’s - it’s fucking _Leannán_.

_Tonight, my taxi driver. I’ll meet you in the usual place._

“Will you, now,” I murmur to my phone.

But from the blossoming of warmth in my cheeks and how I can’t stop smiling, he may as well assume.

\---

At home, I change out of my corporate-looking polo shirt, and consider the contents of my closet for a long time. I’ve never _intended_ to meet Leannán before; it shouldn’t make a difference, but it does.

I shower, just in case I still smell like Eau Sauvage. Arden’s clinging to me more than I’d like to admit, and I’m shaken enough to look - to _really_ look - in the mirror when I do my hair, to see if I can see what he saw, what made him say I looked unwell.

I can. I do look tired. And there’s something going on around my eyes that I don’t remember, that’s turning me older than I should be, puffier and baggier at the same time. The edges of my eyelids are red. There are a few more grey hairs than the last time I counted.

Fuck Arden. Fuck him and the fake plastic outer layer that keeps him airtight.

But maybe he’s right. Maybe I do drink too much. Leannán’s already younger than me by a number of years that I’m afraid to know. It looks like about twenty, right now. He won’t want me for much longer if I keep this up. 

He probably won’t want me for much longer anyway.

But he wants me tonight, so I do what I can about my face, which is mostly ignoring it, and put on a t-shirt and jeans and a nice jacket so it doesn’t look like I tried too hard.

I realise on the way to the bar that he didn’t tell me a time. That’s fine. I can amuse myself. I buy myself a drink - a double, which is hardly anything, but goes down easy, and takes the edge off everything Arden said. Some of it, anyway.

Maybe not enough. I’m headed up to the bar to get a soda, and I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror behind the bottles.

Jesus Christ. What am I doing here? A face like that, and I think I deserve to go home with _anyone_ , let alone Leannán. I look like I need a grave more than a bed. The circles under my eyes are so dark I can see the entire shape of my eye sockets. 

I can’t tear my eyes away from it until the bartender breaks my line of sight by standing in front of me, waving irritably for my attention.

I mean to say, “Just a Coke, please.”

Right up until I open my mouth.

“Double Jamesons,” I say instead. 

What does it matter. What does anything matter. The bartender nods, and reaches down the bottle from its shelf, and I stare into the empty mirrored place where it once was while he pours.

From there on in things get both much easier and much harder. By the time Leannán slides in opposite me, I don’t much mind my face anymore. I can’t really feel it.

Leannán feels it for me. His palm is cool against my cheek.

“Jamie,” he says. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me.

“Why are you sad?” I ask. “Don’t be sad at me like that. You’re too pretty to be sad.”

“Why are _you_?” He strokes a thumb under my eye and shows it to me. Wet. I didn’t know. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing. I’m just too old, today. It’s fine.” I laugh, and I think it almost sounds real. “I’m fine.”

“Anyone can be old, it doesn’t have to stop you. I’m certainly old enough to know that.” 

Leannán looks earnestly at me with those black-coffee eyes in his sweet unlined face and I don’t know what to tell him. “Right you are,” I say. “Well then. Shall we get you a drink, love?”

He winces. “Maybe not. I suspect you’ve had enough for us both.”

“I’m _fine_.” I am. I’ll show him. I stand up.

And then very suddenly he’s very close, and he has an arm around me, and - oh, feet are difficult, and - and legs. Legs are _interesting_.

“Come on, my Jamie, mostly Jamesons,” Leannán murmurs in my ear. “Home and bed, I think.”

“Bed with you?” I try to reach up to stroke the bridge of his nose, because he likes it when I do that, but he evades me.

“I don’t think you’ll make it there without me,” he says wryly.

It’s complicated, and I don’t understand - I want to dance with him, and he’s holding me almost like we might, but he wants to leave. He’s not going without me, that’s for damn sure, and I’m not going without him. Not anywhere. Not now I have him.

It occurs to me what’s going on while he’s steering me into the backseat of a taxi. 

“I’m _pissed_ ,” I say, rather wonderingly. “As a fucking _newt_.”

“That is entirely correct.” Leannán fastens my seatbelt, because he is kind and wonderful and I love him. That seems like something I should have told him. But maybe not right now, not if I’m really as drunk as I’m starting to suspect.

Instead I try to explain to him about Arden, _fucking_ Arden and his plastic face which’ll never get wrinkles, not like mine, and anyway he’d just have them done, whatever that even means, and my ex-boyfriend’s actually a horrible person, isn’t he, really a right c-

Leannán puts his fingers over my mouth. “Shh,” he says. “I know. Don’t listen to him. Listen to me, all right? _I_ like your face.”

“’S not a very good face,” I say mournfully. “’S fulla whiskey.”

“Then it matches the rest of you.” Leannán kisses my cheek, which is sweet, he’s sweet -

\- and then very suddenly I’m on my sofa, and Leannán is in the kitchen running a glass of water, and my mouth tastes the specific kind of terrible that means I don’t ask, I just take the glass and drink. 

I don’t feel very well. Things are spinning. Leannán gets his hands under my arms and I’m up, with my face buried in his hair, which is the nicest place it’s been in days - 

\- I’m in bed. It’s morning. I’m alone.

My head is full of nails and lava, and moving makes me want to cry a little, but I do it just enough to get to the glass of water and the painkillers that have been left out where I’ll see them.

Then I lie back down and try to become one with the mattress for a few hours. I am not a conscious object. I am driftwood on the beach of life. I am _so fucking hungover_.

The headache ebbs a bit, but doesn’t leave. I drink more water, with sugar in it, and half-heartedly nibble on a couple of saltines, and go back to bed. It’s all I can manage. Work is impossible. Fun is impossible. Even breathing is challenging.

I make myself look at my phone in the afternoon, just in case the world’s burning down and I ought to do something, although I don’t know that I’d bother to save myself at this point. I’m slightly relieved to see that I don’t have any call logs from last night, or unwise texts. I don’t really want to know what I did, but as long as the damage is contained to whatever comments I might have made live and in person -

\- God, what did I say to Leannán?

It can’t have been all that bad. The worst I could have done was bitch about Arden, which I am sure I did, or tell Leannán I love him. I may have done that too. That’s probably survivable. He won’t have paid it any mind.

At any rate it seems wise to send a quick text: _I’m so sorry about last night. Let me make it up to you._

Several hours later he sends back: _What did you have in mind?_

_Wednesday? Eight? Meet me @ usual spot & dinner somewhere nice? I can drive us. I won’t drink._

That should be an easy promise to keep. I never want to touch alcohol again. Even the thought of it makes my stomach flip uneasily. 

He doesn’t respond, but he didn’t last time. 

Anyway, he hasn’t turned me down. I don’t think he would hesitate to say no if he wanted to. He’s never been shy with me about what he wants. 

So on Wednesday, I wear most of a suit, and a shirt with actual buttons on it, because I don’t really know what he considers nice but I’m willing to accommodate anything my bank account can handle. 

I’m there by 7.30, just in case he’s early - I get myself a Coke without any trouble this time, since I still feel queasy at even the idea of the smell of whiskey, and I position myself obviously, at the long counter under the windows.

He’s not early. I get myself another Coke.

By 8.30 I’m on soda and lime, because eventually I’ll probably need to sleep. I try not to look at my phone, which has nothing to contribute to the situation. He’s only fashionably late. He’s fashionable enough to pull that off, certainly.

9pm, another soda and lime, and I give in and text him. _Everything okay?_

9.30pm. _Seriously, are you okay?_

9.35pm. _I’m stone cold sober, I swear to you. Never doing that again._

9.37pm. _Babe. Please. Where are you?_

9.38pm. _I’m worried._

10.05pm. _You’re not coming, are you._

10.09pm. _Okay I fucking deserve this but I’m sorry, I am, please say something_

10.09pm. _please_

10.09pm. _Leannán please don’t do this to me_

10.55pm. _I’m going home._

1.47am. _I’m sorry. I fucked up. I fucked up so bad. Please tell me how to make this right._

1.48am. _I can’t sleep and I just want you here._

1.48am. _Please just text me and tell me you’re okay._

8.01am. _I’m going to work but call me, or text me, or anything. Any time._

5.06pm. _Okay. I get the message._

\---

I don’t remember much about that day, or the one that comes after it, or the one after that. I get up, I drive, I take a dozen or two dozen people where they’re going, I go home. I don’t drink. I want to. But not a drop am I allowed, not when that’s what got me here - not when I lost myself the best thing I’ve ever had with it.

It has to have been the drunkenness. I don’t know what else it could be. Which is the problem, isn’t it - I don’t know. I wasn’t in my own body for most of that evening, so I could have done or said anything, and he was charitable enough to get me home and put me to bed but now he doesn’t want anything more to do with me. That’d be a fair call.

He didn’t want to tell me, I suppose. And that hurts - to just be ghosted, when I thought we were closer than that - but what were we, really? A couple of good fucks does not a relationship make. I fell in love with him. That’s stupid, and it’s on me. But why did he even accept, or sound like he accepted, my invitation?

I read over the last text he sent a hundred times, looking at the shadows of nuance as though it were a ten-page essay. I offered. He didn’t actually accept. Not really. He just asked for clarification without directly saying yes or no. I assumed. I saw what I wanted to see.

And now I’ll never see him again.

Unless I do. It’s a big city, but I’m _everywhere_ in it over the course of a day, and everywhere I go, I’m looking for him. Around every corner; behind every plate-glass window; until I’m seeing him in every face I cross paths with, like an illusion hovering over the features of strangers. It’s so much worse than the first time I did this, because before, it was just idle hunger, but now I’m craving him like water, like oxygen. 

I begin to understand the old songs about going mad for love lost.

I write his number on a scrap of receipt, shove it into the dark recesses of my wallet, and delete it from my phone.

Five minutes later I’m hyperventilating, trying not to burst into tears alone in my car in the middle of the financial district, and I’m typing it back in before I stop being able to see. I can’t lose him. I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t bear it.

I’ve already lost him.

I never even had him.

He was never mine to have.

I still can’t bear it.

I am _his_ , even if he isn’t mine, even if he doesn’t want me.

I am his, broken and discarded, not fit for anyone anymore, and I crawl back to the bar and sit with a soda and lime in front of me for hours, staring at phantom images of all of the places where he has been.

Like a shattered limb, my soul swells hot and tender around the break, until everything brushes up against it and sends me into agonies.

I can’t sleep in my own bed until I’ve stripped every stitch of fabric off it, because it touched him and _he isn’t there_. And then when I’ve done it, I wish I hadn’t. Love songs hurt. Breakup songs hurt. Every kiss I see reminds me of how he would chase after my kisses, always greedy for more; I press my own knuckles to my mouth, like a slow-motion punch. I need the pressure. I need to be touched, to be pushed back inside the boundaries of my skin. Even my own hands are better than nothing at all.

I do my best to paste a smile on for my passengers - behind the wheel, I’m a service, not a person, and services don’t feel pain. The veneer holds almost everything in, and my driver rating stays where it should, even if I can’t be as present as I usually am. But it’s hard work to manage even that much. 

I’m lucky that the one afternoon that the radio plays the song Leannán and I danced to on our third night together, just the two of us in the small space of my kitchen, I’m driving a kind, motherly older woman who looks nothing like my own mum but somehow could be her. She offers me a sweet thing made of dates and almonds and doesn’t comment on the tremor in my chin or the glassiness of my eyes. I eat. The sugar helps a little. She nods as though she’s proud of me. When I drop her off at her daughter’s house she makes me take another.

I’m coming unglued, and even sticky-sweet dates won’t hold me together for long. I sit at the bar that night with my soda in hand and my back to the room and pretend I don’t know what I look like. The other patrons obligingly don’t see me either. I might as well not even exist. I’m not sure I do, anymore. If a cabdriver falls in the forest, and nobody cares, does it make a sound?

I’ll be fine, I tell myself, like a mantra. I’ll be fine.

\---

There was a game once that I found in the depths of the internet, probably a teaching tool for someone or other. You’d build a bridge, place its struts, choose what materials it was to be made of, and then send increasingly large and heavily laden trucks across it and watch it sag, or crumble, or shake itself apart under the stresses. The difference, I discovered over several nights of idle armchair engineering, could be as little as an extra five pounds of weight, as much as a good winter coat, and a previously stable bridge would fall into the electronic abyss.

It’s this that I’m thinking of as I sit on the edge of my bed, elbows on knees and chin on hands, braced as solidly as I can be and still feeling myself vibrating hard enough to throw a crucial bolt. Nothing’s happened, nothing of any major import - no new catastrophe. Just the same one I’ve had all along. Yet suddenly, I can’t go on.

I dropped my car keys for the third time this evening, and they sit on the floor between my feet, mocking me. I am out of energy to reach down and pick them up. I am out of energy for absolutely everything but the act of holding myself in one piece. 

I need him. I need him to be here, and to be gentle with me as he asks me for everything, so that I can give in and surrender all of what I am, body and soul, to him, to do as he pleases with it. I don’t want it anymore, I don’t _want_ it, I don’t want to be in my head anymore with nothing for company but this unreasonable devouring grief. I can’t do it.

He isn’t coming back. I know that. I’ve known that for a long time. If I don’t want myself, why would he? There’s nothing here worth wanting.

I can feel the bridge pilings give. And if I start crying, I don’t know how I’ll stop, so I have to do something, and - there’s really only one thing I can do.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. It’s all perception. Nobody perceives me, so I may as well pull the bottle of whiskey out of the top cupboard and pour myself a drink.

I mean to stop at two. But when I get there I don’t want to stop anymore. It’s not turning down the volume on the inside of my head enough. 

Still, outside of the recursive howling loop of _he’s gone and I want him_ , there’s the first shreds of an idea. It’s a bad idea, oh, yes - a terrible idea. But I cling to the shreds, gathering them up like spilled sand, until there’s a handful, enough to assemble, and it takes on a shape like a life preserver. 

_You shouldn’t do this_ , I think, as I grab the whiskey bottle and swig, a replacement for any actual courage.

_You shouldn’t do this_ , and I’m opening my email and finding that trip receipt, copying the dropoff address, staring at the little map.

_You shouldn’t do this,_ but I’m already entering the address and my own, and there’ll be a car here in a minute or two so I grit my teeth and neck the rest of the whiskey and let myself burn up from the inside out. 

\---

I know where I am, more or less, but it takes me completely by surprise when the driver pulls over.

“And here we are,” she says.

I look out the window.

“Are you sure?” I say dubiously, and pull my phone out to check. “I’m… meeting a friend here.”

“Yup.” She glances at my map. “That's the park.”

It is, in fact, a park. Not a huge one, but decently sized, with a hill in the middle that I can see must get a workout when it snows.

But it’s surrounded on three sides by towering blocks of apartments, and of course it must be one of those that he belongs in. He just wanted to walk through the park to his place, I assume. A little bit of nature.

So I pay the driver, and get my legs under me, and wander out into the park. His park. 

The sun is setting and the air is getting cold, though the whiskey means I don’t mind it. He has to be here somewhere. I can feel it, like a compass feels magnetic north. I am close to him.

“Leannán,” I whisper. “I’m here.”

It sounds like a blessing and a curse, a promise and a threat. From the way the wind swallows my words, I don’t think I’m particularly welcome.

I imagine him, loose-limbed and carefree, on the wooden bench at the top of the hill, with the sunset’s colours gleaming off his skin. He’d look perfect there. And I could sit next to him, and pull him into my arms, lay him back with his head in my lap - I’d do all of that and more. I want to. I’ll find him and I’ll make him understand. I have to, while the fire in my veins is still hot.

The bench has a commanding view of all of the apartment buildings around it, so the fire carries me there to begin my surveying. I half-hope I might see him, leaning against a balcony rail, cigarette drawing patterns in the growing shadows. But there are floors, and floors, and _floors_ , up and up until I’m dizzy, and if he’s looking out at me now I can’t tell.

I sit down, because it’s better than falling down. And then I lie down, because then I can look up at all of the floors of all of the buildings and they don’t shift and double the same way, or at least quite as badly.

The nicest of the buildings has a light on in one apartment, somewhere around the tenth floor. I decide, on the spur of it, that that one there is his - that warm-looking place with the red sofa, up next to the floor-to-ceiling window. There’s a big television, and it looks upscale but livable, somewhere he could cook fancy dinners and entertain the beautiful people -

Oh. A blonde woman walks over and sits down on the red sofa, and a ginger man joins her. And I’m just as far away as ever from knowing where Leannán is.

This was a stupid plan. Not just a bad plan - it is that too, but - a stupid plan. I don’t even know that he lives in any of these buildings. And what was I going to do, anyway? Go wait outside each one like a stray until I saw him? Hope there are names on the mailboxes, even though nobody does that anymore? Pretend like it’s charming, not stalkerish, that I showed up here?

All at once the fire is out, and I’m cold and exhausted and absolutely _wrecked_ , and before I can stave it off my eyes well up. 

I hadn’t realised how much hope I still had. How much I really, truly thought this might just magically work and fate would drop Leannán in my lap again.

I sit up and scuff my knuckles angrily over my cheeks. I don’t want to be crying in a public park, where anyone could see me. I look… I look like what I am. An old drunk, rocking side to side on a park bench, consumed with a misery so deep they can’t remember social norms anymore.

I’ll stand up. I’ll walk out of here under my own power, and not look back, and get sober and get on with my painfully ordinary life without Leannán. I heave myself up to my feet -

And my knees buckle without warning, and I hit the gravel pathway hard.

For half a second it doesn’t hurt. Then I see exactly how sharp the rocks were, where I caught myself on my hands. I am bleeding from half a dozen places, filthy and lacerated and bruised and still fucking _crying_ , because adding injury to insult is the order of the day.

I can’t stand, so I crawl, on my raw hands and my dirty knees, off the path, onto the soft grass. And there, I lie down, whimpering like a dog, to let the poison in my stomach do what it will with me. I know I’ll pass out, but I can’t help it. It doesn’t matter. Everything hurts too fucking much. The dark can have me. 

\---

I’m having a lovely dream. I’m in a dim, warm room, and a beautiful woman with the same bow mouth and dark cat eyes as Leannán is bending over me, bathing my face with a soft wet cloth that smells of cleansing herbs. I don’t seem to be able to move, but I don’t mind. I know she wants me to stay still, and it’s easy.

“There now,” she says, and her voice is as sweet as she looks. “That’s better, isn’t it.“

It is. She smiles like I said it out loud. I feel a million times better, because this is a dream and the headache I deserve to have is waiting in the waking world. I’m glad of the respite. The bed is so soft I wonder if it might be feathers.

Still, it’s a strange sort of dream. Two, maybe three, people are having an argument in a nearby room, close enough that I can hear them but not understand.

“Never you mind about that,” my nurse says, and lays a gentle hand on my chest. “We’ll sort him out.”

I’m not sure about that. A door opens, and the argument spills out: “I will see for myself,” says a woman I immediately know I don’t want to cross.

Heels clack, and she’s in the doorway, and my guess was right. She looks like she’s made it to thirty-five without anyone ever daring to question her authority. My dream has given her Leannán’s face too - his sharp cheekbones and ink-slash eyebrows, and blood-red lipstick on the same full lips. But that’s where the resemblance ends, because her dark hair is pulled back in a chignon that would never think of disintegrating into his flyaway wisps, and the flawless charcoal-grey skirt suit she wears is the furthest thing imaginable from his fashion sense.

She clacks over and seizes my chin, looking clinically into my eyes, this way and that. I don’t even know what she’s looking for, but I feel personally responsible for the scowl on her face as she finds it, and drops me.

“Come and look at what you’ve done,” she barks, which is directed at the hallway. “Wicked, careless boy. This is exactly why we have such an image problem.”

And this must be a dream, because a third woman with the same traits as the other two drags Leannán in by the wrist and shoves him forward. He looks mutinous, and horribly upset, but he doesn’t try to pull away.

He’s here, and no matter the look on his face, and no matter if I’m dreaming him, I want him so much I can’t quite breathe.

“Bewitching mortals is a dangerous game these days, little brother,” my nurse says. “There’s always someone who’ll look for them and want an answer.”

“Jamie was different,” Leannán says, staring at the floor. He hasn’t looked directly at me once yet. “Or. I thought so.”

“Different or no, you’re just lucky this one had the sense to turn up on the doorstep where we’d be able to help.” The one I can’t help thinking of as _Ma’am_ is clearly at the end of her patience. “Do you _know_ how much work you’d have made me, little brother?”

“Different, how?” The one holding Leannán’s arm speaks for the first time, calm but incisively curious. 

Leannán’s lower lip trembles. “I thought Jamie really loved me.”

He dashes his free hand across his eyes, and I can’t stand it: “I did,” I say, because even if this is a dream, I have to. “I _do_.”

That gets his attention. “Then - what the _fuck_ , Jamie, why - you _blanked_ me.” His whole body is shaking with rage and hurt, so that the tears in his eyes seem to flicker. “I was good to you. I was kind. I _loved_ you, and I would have forgiven you anything, but I stood there in that bar, fucking _screaming_ your name, and you couldn’t even look at me.”

Dream logic, but - “When did I do that? I’ve never done that to anyone.”

“You did it to me.” Leannán holds my gaze despite the tears that get away from him.

“I don’t understand,” I plead. “I was sober. And you weren’t _there_.”

“Interesting,” the third sister says slowly. “You’re neither of you lying. You. Mortal. Jamie. You are in your cups, and thoroughly so. But you had the sense to come to us, and to call us with blood on our doorstep so we couldn’t disregard you. I think you know more than you know you know.”

She looks piercingly at Leannán. “Brother, did you tell this mortal who you are?”

“Of course not,” Leannán growls. “I know the rules.“

Ma’am nods. “And rightly done.”

“Perhaps.” The third sister comes out from behind Leannán and seems to come into sharper focus as she looks at me. Her hair is long, shot through with streaks of iron grey, and braided into a crown. “Perhaps not. Do it now.”

Leannán nods. “On your head be it, then, Eldest.” He squares his shoulders and wipes his face, and something undefinable settles over him - not calm, he’s still red-nosed and white around the lips and angry enough to tear the room apart, but… power and the knowledge of it. I feel as though I should be afraid, and I might be if I had anything left he hadn’t already destroyed. 

“Jamie,” he says. “I am the son and heir to the kingdom of the Tuatha Dé Danann.”

I squint at him. “... _What?_ ”

“I’m fae. I’m not human.” The look on his face is a mix of blood-deep pride and still, still that awful defensive anger.

“No, no, I got that. Not just the beautiful people, but the actual Fair Folk, okay, sure. Of course you are. Why the fuck not. You’re too pretty to be real and I’ll believe nearly anything on a trial basis. But… you’re a _prince_.”

He puts his jaw forward, mouth tight, and nods.

“You’re a prince. And you slept with _me_. More than once.” I shake my head. “Now I _know_ I’m dreaming.”

“You’re not,” the Eldest says. 

When she says it, for some reason, it sinks in. I can feel the quicksand uncertainty, the sense of falling, drain away - I don’t know what ground I’m standing on, but… fine. I’m not dreaming. I’m here, in this impossibly soft bed, and the man I love is looking at me as though I tried to put a knife through his heart and mostly succeeded. And he’s some sort of supernatural royalty.

It’s much easier to accept than it should be. Maybe it’s the way Leannán looks right now, as though there ought to be a circlet of gold holding back his dark curls. Or possibly that nothing that’s happened to me for days has felt any more real than this. 

Or possibly just that if it’s true, then I _want_ to believe it, because he’s really here. And then maybe there’s still a chance.

“You are, however, not entirely in your world,” the healer says. “You’re in our home. In my bed, to be exact. We brought you in because I thought you might die.”

“And because our brother carried on so at us doing it that I knew there had to be some story behind it,” Ma’am says. “Which there certainly was.” She glares at Leannán. “Brother - youngest, fairest, and most foolish - I have another question. Did you give this mortal the Sight?”

Leannán looks affronted. “I did not. Jamie found me.”

“I thought as much.” The Eldest nods. 

“Jamie,” says the healer. “How often do you drink?”

I think about that. And then I think about the way the shadows dance when I’ve had a few, and the way the taste of Leannán’s mouth has always been overlaid with sweet whiskey, and I can feel the blood leave my face. 

“Holy shit,” I whisper.

From the size of Leannán’s eyes, he’s come to about the same conclusion, and I see the anger draining out of him, leaving only the awareness that we share: oh yes, mistakes have been made.

“But… didn’t you get my texts that night? Didn’t you know how torn up I was that you hadn’t shown up?”

Leannán blushes hotly. “... I was so angry I blocked your number,” he admits. “When I left the bar, I… wanted to forget you existed. I couldn’t believe anyone would do that to me. I couldn’t believe _you_ would.”

I feel sick at the thought. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t - I’d never. You have to know that.”

At my side, the youngest sister rises, and goes to a shelf along the wall, laden with bottles of every size. Her hand hovers over one, then another; then she turns back to Leannán. “The way I see it, there’s a choice to be made.” She looks at me. “You love him. Which is not entirely your own fault, but is why you’re here at all, half-mad with it until you listened to instincts you didn’t know you had. So I assume you want to keep him, if you can.”

Whatever I say now, I know it has to be the right thing. But there’s really only one answer, and it’s so easy: “More than anything.”

“So. Either we take all your memories, all your knowledge of him and us and this place, and you wake up in your own bed, to make your way alone.” She looks very seriously at us both. “Or we give you Sight that doesn’t depend on you drowning yourself in drink, and you stay.”

I watch Leannán’s face. He’s never been hard to read, and he’s fighting himself now.

“I’m gonna be honest.” I hold my hands out, palm up. “I don’t know what you want. But if you don’t want me anymore, the only kind thing you can do is to take my memory of you before you put me back. Because if I don’t have you, and I _know_ I don’t… I don’t think I can go on.”

“What if I do want you?” He twists his hands around each other, and I feel my heart in my throat. “What if I’ve never met anyone like you? What if I need to have you?”

He looks as helpless as I feel. 

“Then have me,” I say. “For as long as you can.”

“How long is that?”

“It doesn’t matter. I know it burns us out, loving you. I’ve read the stories, and it doesn’t end well for me whether you keep me or leave me.” My throat is getting too tight to speak. “But that’s okay. Either way - either way, Leannán, I’m glad -”

“You are both being very dramatic,” Ma’am says curtly. “I haven’t spent the last few decades rehabilitating our image to have you believe that we just swan about draining the life force out of mortals and discarding them as we choose, as though we were common vampires and you some sort of sippy cup.”

Leannán glares at her, teary and more than a little scandalised. “Sister!”

“Well, it’s the truth.” She is quite unmoved. “Jamie, should you decide to put up with our brother, know this: he is young yet, and doesn’t always know as much as he believes he does. This being a case in point. We are the Daoine Sídhe. If we wish to keep a mortal alive and well, we _can_. It’s hardly difficult.”

The compulsion to lie still has eased, and so I reach out for Leannán, although I’m still not sure he’ll come to me. “I’m sorry,” I say, and swallow back my own tears. “I’m sorry for all of this. And I’m sorry to your sisters, for the trouble I’ve put them to. But I’m not sorry for loving you.”

Leannán sniffs, a not-terribly-regal sound that mostly just reminds me that future King or not, he’s apparently the fae equivalent of exactly the age he looks. “I didn’t leave you much choice,” he says, and his voice quavers. “Once I decided I loved you.”

I keep my hand out. “And do you still?”

The youngest sister finally takes a bottle from the shelf - just a tiny one, clear glass and clear liquid with a dropper in it. She hands it to Leannán, and finally he crosses the room and sits next to the bed.

He leans over me, so close now after all this time apart, and I can smell the vanilla scent of him just like our first night together. “You’re absolutely sure?” he says, as he unscrews the dropper on the bottle.

I watch the liquid tremble with his hands. “I’m sure,” I tell him. And I am.

When the drops hit my eyes, they burn, so intensely that I have to squeeze them shut. For a fleeting moment there’s a strange taste in the back of my throat - like an old, sweet berry wine. 

And then Leannán kisses my eyelids, left and right, then left and right again, and the burning stops as though it had never happened.

I open my eyes, and all I can see is his face, near enough that I could kiss him.

He kisses me before I can.

“Let it be so,” the Eldest says.

“Please, please let it be so,” I whisper against his mouth.

“Jamie,” he says. “Jamie -” And I feel him smile. “That, ah. That wasn’t a very good kiss. You’d better give it back to me.”

So I do.

\---

On the pillow next to me, dark hair spreading like a soft inkblot against the white cotton, there’s a boy. That’s probably the best term for him, anyhow. He’s explained he has a couple hundred years on me, but he doesn’t look a bit like it, naked and golden in the morning sunlight. He just looks like he belongs right where and how he is. 

And I can blink as many times as I like, and all that happens is he laughs, and pulls me to him.

**Author's Note:**

> title from john keats, "la belle dame sans merci".
> 
> surprise! it's urban fantasy! yeah, i read a lot of that, it was about time.
> 
> if you have a fairly decent grounding in irish mythology, you probably spotted the twist as soon as our young prince gave his name as [_leannán_](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/leann%C3%A1n#Irish) (transliterating irish phonemes into english orthography is exceptionally hard even if you can find two people who agree on how it ought to be said, but i chose a pronunciation influenced by the old irish [_lennán_](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lenn%C3%A1n#Old_Irish), which means the same but is more specific about the named person being male). but if you don't, i might have gotten away with it until the third act. so here's some fun facts that were in my deck.
> 
> he isn't a [_leannán sídhe_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leanan_s%C3%ADdhe) in the traditional sense, but he has a literalist sense of humour, because what else is he but a fairy lover. and he would never give his true name to a mortal on the first date. i like to think that jamie basically calling him "sweetheart" the whole time probably secretly cracks him up. but jamie loves him so much that that's what any name he gave would sound like anyway.
> 
> similarly, the three sisters don't get named, because they would never give them or want them used in jamie's presence, but also because in the course of research, i discovered that [brigid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid), the daughter of the high king of the tuatha dé danann, is often depicted as tripartite, being three sisters: the healer (the youngest sister, who does pretty much what it says on the tin), the goddess of poets (who figured out poets get no respect anymore and went into PR instead, because pretty words is pretty words), and the smith (the builder and bringer of solidity and good sense). 
> 
> so they are all brigid, which means leannán is their brother [aengus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aengus), a god of love, youth, and poetic inspiration. i didn't think ezra would mind embodying him for me. especially since it seems to be a commonly held belief amongst ezra's fanbase that were he to take your hand and lead you into a basement somewhere, you are as likely as not to emerge a hundred years later, but none of us are about to say no.
> 
> interestingly, "jamie" isn't jamie's true name either. so everyone's on the same footing. i won't say who i had in mind when writing them, but i would love to know who you fitted into their role. and if it's yourself, that's fine too. this is the closest i'll ever get to writing a reader/x fic. :D
> 
> i didn't build a playlist for this one, but i did spend most of the fortnight it took me to write this looping andy mckee's excellent album [joyland](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF66E08425B75E788).
> 
> and finally, if by chance you didn't come here from there, you can find me on [tumblr](http://acroamatica.tumblr.com).


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